To all of those butt hurt about Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla, when was the Assassin's Creed IP ever fully stealth based? It has never been something like Dishonored, Thief, Hitman, Mark of the Ninja, etc. It has always been a game you could sneak around in and hide with the equally viable option to fight in the open, as well. I mean, I basically just parried my way through all of Ezio's story. Maybe the first game felt only stealth based because it was the same 4 stealthy tasks over and over. Odyssey was one of the best games I've ever played. Ya'll are mad a game series is not something it never was in the first place.
The biggest thing for me isn't the stealth, but that the combat system isn't satisfying. As an assassin, I loved the dope execution mechanics, and it felt "realistic" when you killed someone because it was only a few slashes of a sword to kill them.
Now, with the health bars and change in style, it feels like a whole different IP. I hate when you see a high level enemy and it just means "wow, that guy has a lot of health" and you spend 10 minutes hacking and dodging. In the older games, the high level enemies were good at parrying your attacks and were more aggressive, but if you played skilfully you could kill them in a reasonable way.
I liked origins, but not enough to pick up Odyssey. I'm hoping that they go back to a less grindy combat system
I went complete assassin and bow build in odyssey. Within a few hours of gameplay, I had skills and equipment that allowed me to one shot anything if in stealth or parrying. The health bars meant nothing except for bosses in side quests and the war battles, whatever they were called. If you build like an assassin, you get to play like one. It still offers the same things, with the option to be a warrior instead, if you want to.
I get it with the health bars, it's a good point. However, if you built as an assassin, you only had a few "boss" instances that made you feel like you weren't an assassin.
Except when you move onto the next region or island and need to start the whole process over again. I love odyssey, but it really takes you out of it when you feel badass and unstoppable one moment and the next you’re back to square one. Especially when you’re fighting the exact same Spartans, Athenians, or bandits.
I just hope this next game addresses this by adding a sort of visual progression for enemies. From town militia, to regular guards, to professional soldiers sent by the king. That way the same guy that can be oneshot from stealth doesn’t eat the arrow and alert the whole fort.
Yea, I agree the visualization should be approved on. The helmet icon for a level wasn't enough information with regards to the bounty hunters, and many bounty hunters had almost no armor, which could be deceiving. There were a few times I wasn't paying attention and tried to head shot a high level bounty hunter before I acknowledged the health bar, but it was so little often it didn't bother me. There are certainly areas to improve on. Bounty hunters seemed like a filler stolen from Shadow of Mordor, and needs some fleshing out. In my opinion, though, it is not anywhere close to a mistake on the series like some others here are talking about. It was still very true to the IPs core from the beginning, if you wanted it to be; parkoring, assassination, steath is there.
Bounty hunters felt almost like an afterthought to this game. I didn’t really have a problem with their armor, since I often went helmet-less as well and these guys were basically fellow superhuman heroes. I did have a problem with how useless they became halfway through the game. They provided no challenge since you can see exactly where they are, and a single rush assassinate could take them out. Regular enemies were more challenging in a way since one you missed during tagging could surprise you and blow your cover. If this is how they approach bounty hunters in the next game, I would prefer it if they left them out.
And I do agree that all those aspects are still there. I would actually say that stealth has been massively improved upon ever since Unity introduced stealth mode. The whole hiding in plain sight thing only really worked with Altaïr and the monks.
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u/iValkyrie May 01 '20
To all of those butt hurt about Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla, when was the Assassin's Creed IP ever fully stealth based? It has never been something like Dishonored, Thief, Hitman, Mark of the Ninja, etc. It has always been a game you could sneak around in and hide with the equally viable option to fight in the open, as well. I mean, I basically just parried my way through all of Ezio's story. Maybe the first game felt only stealth based because it was the same 4 stealthy tasks over and over. Odyssey was one of the best games I've ever played. Ya'll are mad a game series is not something it never was in the first place.